Laura Ellis: As WFPL's cuteness correspondent, things have been pretty slow on my beat since we broke the baby bat story. So I'm happy to bring you cute news from elsewhere. This professor at Emory University trained some dogs to maintain the complete stillness needed to undergo an MRI. Once they would do that, scientists could look at their brain activity and how the dogs respond to the sight/smell/sound of loved ones, and other stimuli. Guess what: They love us! Otherwise I wouldn't have submitted this story to WFPL's What Are We Reading. Read Dogs are People, too.

Devin Katayama: A statewide truancy report was released in California for the first time. My dad, who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, sends me education related articles every now and then and “Effort to combat truancy by finding its causes” is what I'm reading this week. The cost for truancy and absenteeism in California is $1.4 billion a year, according to the report. The main causes of students missing days and days of class might sound familiar to anyone who's looked at the issue here in Kentucky and around the country: health issues (asthma), incarceration, homelessness, poverty. State officials are asking schools to step up efforts—some simple, like placing calls to parents to remind them of the legal issues attached to truancy in the state—to reduce the number of students missing class. Read Efforts to Combat Truancy by Finding its Cause.

Joseph Lord: All I remember is that some of my classmates stayed home from school, but my dad made me go. I was in elementary school and a researcher had predicted that an earthquake would strike in the region. He was wrong, but (though I was pretty young) I remember people being concerned. Technology has improved since the early '90s, and science can predict when an earthquake will happen—but only with a very, very short warning. As the Verge reports, advocates of the system thinks those few seconds could help protect people and property, but it's not being implemented in the U.S. Read Why is the U.S. Pathetically Unprepared for an Earthquake?